Barrack

by Greg Lovette & Andrew Welch

Barrack is a game that is so insidiously addictive that we had to mask its
evil tendencies with a smattering of stunning artwork from our digital
manipulator, Mark Conge. The above title screen is the last image you'll see
before your productivity takes an abrupt nose-dive.

Meticulously crafted by Greg Lovette, Barrack is a game that is hard to
pigeonhole. It exhibits a precarious balance between action and strategy,
thinking and reflex. The feeling you get from playing Barrack is an eccentric
harmony between the automatic, mind-numbing pleasure of Tetris and the kind of
action found in Maelstrom that leaves you with sweat on your brow.

The goal of Barrack is deceptively simple: there are a number of balls on the
play field that are bouncing like a neurotic on prozac. Your job is to use your
shooter to isolate them. Sounds easy, right?

It isn't. The first problem is that if a ball breaks your shooter's particle
beam before it tears through the play field, your shooter overloads and explodes
in a cascade of fire and scrap metal.

The second problem is that these aren't any ordinary balls. They have more
personalities than Sibyl, and none of them are particularly friendly. We'll
leave the particulars up to your imagination for now, but suffice it to say that
these aren't the kind of balls you get from bubble gum machines.

Oh, did we forget to mention the land shark? Bosco is a rare breed of shark
that can rearrange his molecular structure, enabling him to travel at quite a
clip through otherwise solid substances. If you don't pay attention while he
closes in on your shooter, you may end up being fish-bait. He's tenacious,
voracious, and about every other -acious you can think of all rolled into one
lean, mean, shooter-munchin' machine.

We recommend that you begin preparing for Barrack now: drop the ButtMaster
that aunt Elda got you for Christmas and begin a rigorous regime of
mouse-aereobics. Find a soccer ball and kick it repeatedly, shouting aloud "Take
that you stupid ball!" It'll make you feel better later on, because pretty soon,
those balls are gonna be kicking you around.